


Development

by CantStopImagining



Series: Text Posts [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, and an erin character study sort of, honestly I'm not sure what this is but its a lot of fluff, i really need to get better at putting patty and abby into these things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 21:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7987189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on this tumblr post: </p><p>"imagine someone looking at you doing something like completely mundane like putting your hair up or writing a paper and they’re just sitting there thinking “wow. i love her. shes so beautiful” and i say imagine bc its just not realistic like at all esp for my ugly ass!!!"</p><p>Erin grows as a person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Development

**Author's Note:**

> I keep doing this... working on new chapters for on-going fics and ending up with a one shot that won't leave me alone. Anyway, this is as fluffy as it gets as far as I'm concerned. Which is to say it still has hints of angst. Enjoy.

Holtzmann has no filter whatsoever. It’s one of the things about her that Erin finds most mortifying. She’s constantly on edge: in the mayor’s office, in front of television cameras at busts, even on their own in the lab, knowing that she has absolutely no control over what is going to come out of Holtzmann's mouth. Especially when it’s about her. The creep of heat up the back of her neck, her palms sweating, the way she ducks her head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry… it’s all familiar. Erin’s spent a lifetime being teased, being talked about. She knows that there’s no difference between being a child and being an adult, it still hurts the same. She still feels that same feeling wash over her: you can’t trust what anybody says, you can’t accept a compliment because it’s always backhanded, or a joke, someone about to jump out from behind a dumpster with a camera whilst everybody breaks out in laughter, Erin alone in the middle of it all red faced and desperately trying not to cry.

It takes her a really really long time to realise Holtzmann isn’t doing that. When Holtzmann tells her she likes her shirt, or says she’s cute when she frowns, she actually means it. And in some ways, that’s worse. Erin gets flustered too easily around her, and then she thinks it must _mean something_ and even when logically she knows it’s just a reaction to being actually appreciated, to it not being a joke at her expense, she can't stop wondering.

Erin’s good at being appreciated academically. She’s good at having her work complimented. She’s never been given any reason to be good at accepting personal compliments.

It’s not like there haven’t been men. There have been a few. She knows, though, that when they compliment her it's mostly because she’s the only youngish woman in her field, and her credentials look good for a potential partner. She knows this mostly because men fall into two categories: 

1\. the older ones - most of whom are married - who sleep with her once or maybe twice (stiff, uncomfortable, boring sex that she mostly doesn’t even enjoy) and then never call. She’s a welcome change to their old, boring wives, but that’s about it.  
2\. the ones who date her but show absolutely no interest in getting to know her and try to change every single thing about her as soon as she ‘belongs’ to them. She stays with them because that’s what you do when you’re 30-something and a woman.

Since becoming a Ghostbuster, Erin actually feels like she has some self-worth. Whether that change is based in Holtzmann’s compliments and the fact she has a solid group of women who genuinely, wholeheartedly love her, or the fact that, _god damnit, she’s been right all these years_ , is debatable, and honestly, she doesn’t really care. 

Either way, it finally stops her from dating men who couldn’t care less about her.

Holtzmann teases her constantly, seemingly understanding the ways to get under Erin’s skin as well as she knows how to build weaponry. It’s a different kind of teasing; playful and without spite. She just likes to get a rise out of Erin, and Erin understands that. She feels like she’s grown up in the six months that they’ve known each other because instead of getting embarrassed and looking away when she becomes the audience of one to Holtzmann’s ridiculous gyrating dance movements (‘it’s always crotch centric over here, baby’), she joins in. She responds to winks with finger guns and a crooked smile. She gives almost as good as she gets. The first time she makes a quip back at Holtzmann, she watches the blonde’s jaw drop in surprise for a full ten seconds before she catches herself, and Erin can’t help but grin.

“What, you don’t think I can flirt back?” she says, shimmying back to her desk in time to the 80s pop ballad that’s blasting from Holtzmann’s tape player. And okay, it’s satisfying when she glances back at Holtzmann and sees her staring into the space she was just stood in, still not quite knowing how to react, but it doesn’t mean anything. Right?

It’s a cat and mouse game from then on. Erin feels her confidence building over time though she’s barely aware of it. This thing with her and Holtzmann is easy, comfortable. Natural.

“What have you done with my best friend?” Abby asks, one afternoon, a lop-sided smile on her face, half-quizzical, half-impressed, and Erin shrugs her shoulders.

She can’t fight the smile slowly creeping onto her lips, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, you’re a new woman Erin Gilbert,” she clinks her beer bottle against Erin’s, “I like it. A lot.”

Still, the first time Holtzmann kisses her, there’s this tiny part of her that still thinks maybe it’s a joke. Maybe it’s all part of the game. Maybe her attempts to one-up Erin have gone too far.

She kisses back though.

It’s gentle, but in a way that Erin hasn’t experienced before. It turns her insides to goo. She doesn’t want to pull back, can’t quite get close enough, can’t stop the wave of electricity that vibrates through her. A slow, lazy kiss shouldn’t have these consequences. She has to stop lying to herself.

The next kiss is different. It’s charged, hot and heavy, teeth colliding and hands grasping for more, and Erin only snaps out of it when she hears a low moan from Holtzmann’s lips, a pool of heat building in her abdomen that makes her feel dizzy.

Holtzmann whines when she pulls away. Like, actually whines, like a puppy.

“So, we’re doing this,” Erin says, subconsciously touching her lips, and the look in Holtzmann’s eyes is so dark, her pupils so blown, that Erin almost forgets how to breathe.

It happens. They happen. A lot. 

At first Erin can trick herself into believing it isn’t really anything. They’re friends who gravitate around each other all day every day, making jokes between kicking ghost ass, and, at the end, end up in bed together. That’s it. She doesn’t want to think about feelings because feelings usually lead to disappointment and heart break and those words ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, and she doesn’t want to have to think about a time after Holtzmann. It isn’t like anybody else. There’d been a sense of relief when Greg had ended things. Phil had sizzled out. The various men who went back to their wives had left Erin feeling used and dirty and filled with self-loathing, but they hadn’t _meant anything._

Holtzmann, she quickly realises, means everything.

“If you hurt her, we gonna be having words. More than words.” Patty corners her one night and Erin’s cheeks flush pink and she should have known that neither of them had to say anything, that Abby and Patty just _know._ She bobs her head up and down, doesn’t quite know what to say.

She’s never thought herself capable of hurting anybody before, mostly because nobody has actually cared before, but now that the idea’s there, she’s terrified.

Something shifts between them, if only marginally. It happens wordlessly, a natural progression. They aren’t just friends who have sex anymore. Holtzmann kisses her lazily in doorways, and offers her piggybacks when she’s covered in ectoplasm, and nuzzles into her neck at night, falling asleep with her arm draped possessively over her ribs. She wakes up to coffee and waffles in bed, and falls asleep to the sound of Holtzmann tinkering quietly in the living room. Erin’s never known what it’s like to be in a proper relationship before, and Holtzmann never does anything conventionally, but this seems to be one thing they’re both good at.

Erin’s sitting at her desk, frowning over the notes for the book she and Abby have been working on all year, when she feels Holtzmann’s eyes on her. It’s the middle of July and it’s too hot, and she’s sweating despite the humidifier Holtzmann built running on high. When she looks up and sees Holtzmann, she frowns. Her lips are in a crooked little smile, her chin propped up on her hands, elbows on the desk, and her eyes are crinkled in the corners. It’s not her usual manic grin. Her eyes are soft, focussed only on Erin, and Erin can’t help but squirm a little under the scrutiny.

“What?” she asks, putting her pencil down and sub-consciously running a hand through her hair.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” Holtzmann says, her smile breaking into a much wider grin.

Erin rolls her eyes, “no I’m not. I’m sweaty and tired and my hair’s a mess and—“

“Beautiful,” Holtzmann punctuates this statement with a nod. Erin feels her cheeks flush at the compliment, despite the fact it’s Holtz, and this is ridiculous.

Erin sighs and goes back to work, though she’s still smiling. She pulls the hair elastic from her wrist and bundles her hair up into a messy ponytail, anything to get it off the back of her neck.

“I have such a mad crush on you right now.”

“Holtz, we’ve been dating for three months.”

“I know.”

Erin doesn’t look up from her papers, momentarily glad that Holtzmann doesn’t say anything else. She scribbles notes in the margins of her latest draft, frowns over the spelling of something. It’s too hot to concentrate, but they’ve promised their editor.

It’s too quiet in the lab without Holtzmann working away at a new project, or dancing around to music, or humming under her breath. She can hear Abby and Patty having a conversation downstairs, though the words are too far away to make sense of. Erin glances up at Holtzmann, and she’s still sitting there, looking at her with that same expression. Erin groans.

“I can’t get anything done with you sitting there staring at me,” she complains.

“I’m not staring. I’m gazing.”

“It’s unnerving.”

Erin dips her head again, bites the top of her pencil. She’s read the same sentence at least six times over, and it still isn’t going in. She skips back to the start of the page and starts over, murmuring quietly as she reads, tapping her pencil absent-mindedly against her cheek.

“I love you.”

 She almost doesn’t hear it, it’s so quiet against the sound of the humidifier, the words sort of garbled, but when her head catches up with it, Erin freezes, almost dropping the pencil. She looks up at Holtzmann, who has moved closer, propping herself up on the edge of Erin’s desk. She’s looking at her with bright, shining blue eyes, and that lop-sided smile, and Erin feels her heart squeeze in her chest at the absurdity of it. The first time she’s spoken those words, and it’s 3pm on a Thursday, Erin’s sitting here dripping with sweat, her hair sticking up all over, frowning over a page of notes, and _Holtzmann loves her._

Swallowing a lump that’s formed at the back of her throat, Erin stares at her.

“Huh?” she says, for lack of anything else to say.

Holtzmann’s bravado falters and she suddenly looks nervous for the first time since Erin’s met her, “I was just sitting there, at my desk, watching you doing mundane tasks and I was overwhelmed thinking ’wow she’s so beautiful, I love her’ and then I thought, y’know, I should tell her. Uh, you. Tell you.”

She pauses, tilts her head to one side, squints.

“Or… I should not have told you. Uh. Just kidding?”

Erin feels like she’s going to cry so she does the only thing she knows to do, and grabs Holtzmann by the collar of her shirt, pulling her half-way across the desk, and kissing her.

It doesn’t work. She cries anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Come follow me on tumblr at @katemckutie where I accept all prompts, and won't shut up about Ghostbusters.


End file.
